Only My Friends
by Jack Wong
Summary: The Riddler is pronounced dead; Batman feels strangely sad at the news.  A copycat emerges, and the Dark Knight and Robin attend the funeral in costume.


The Riddler is dead.

Or so say the papers, and the word that flows through the cracks and drains of the city, pelts it like rainwater. The body looks like his, especially the face. The death was fitting – shot by security guards in a bank's safe deposit box room. His henchmen escaped, one shot in the chest and surely dead now.

His henchmen escaped…

It's too perfect. Nothing was reported stolen. Maybe nothing was, but my gut is telling me something different.

But the dental records match. The man in the papers is Eddy Nygma, the nerd himself. Or so I tell myself. I sit on a skyscraper, brooding under a wrathful sky spitting down misery on my city. He was set up, is my conclusion. He had been going soft, from what I recall; it had been easy the last time, amateurish.

But it's always unnerving when these people die. The dance, ended. In a strange way I will feel sad about it. He was a murderer, a psychopath, everything evil…so I talk myself out of my feelings. The world is better off, and I leap from the rooftop knowing that there is one less threat out there in the world.

'

"Are you going to the funeral, sir?" Alfred greets me as I get out of the batmobile, down in the cave.

"Only to see who shows up," I say.

"The Riddler, dead and gone…" Alfred checks my face.

"What?"

"Nothing. I thought I saw a bruise." He pauses. "Dick is here."

"You mean he's back?" I ask.

Alfred nods. "He caught the red eye."

'

"You didn't like Peru?" I say in his doorway; his door was open. He is unpacking.

He turns. "Machu Picchu was cool," he says.

"Then why'd you leave?"

Dick looks down. "Everyone else was drinking."

I stare. "You left because your friends were drinking?"

"It's pretty much all they were doing." There are things he's not telling me. "I ate guinea pig. I saw the Nazca lines, like you said." He looks up. "I was done."

"What did you tell your friends?"

"That someone died," he said.

I pause. "Not…"

He laughs. "No, this was before that. That would have been great. 'Guys, this guy I used to fight in my suit just died…'"

Dick looks sad. He's been hurt. "…when you want to talk, let me know," I say.

I peel myself from the doorframe, turning to walk away.

"Don't go," he said.

I turn back. I keep forgetting he's a kid, and how I was a kid, once. I pause, not sure what to say. "Come on, champ. What happened?"

He looks to me. "I saw all the suffering, down there. I…I couldn't hang."

"And your friends…"

"They're just…having a party. People are begging for less than cents. And they're having a party."

We pause.

"You could have left," I say. "Traveled alone."

"I did," he says. "I did." He pulls a shirt out of his bag. "I just felt helpless. I wanted to do something." He throws the shirt at his closet. "But I couldn't. I fucking couldn't."

"…I'm sorry," I say.

"About what?" he asks.

"That your trip went like that."

He shakes his head. "It's not that. It's just that, here I do something. Here we do something. Right?"

I walk over and sit on the bed. "I like to think so."

"I know what you do with your money, too…it just made me think of you. Of all this messed-up world, and you stand against it."

"No," I say. "We stand against it. You and me."

He looks like he wants to hug me. But he's too old, and he knows it. "You know, sometimes I get angry."

"About what?"

Dick laughs. "About the suit. About 'Robin.' About you." He looks up. "But when I leave, it's all I can think about." He stares at his bag, and pauses. "It's who I am."

I pause. "You mean about me pushing you?"

"Yeah, yeah, about that." And he looks up. "But it's good. It's good that you push me. It's good that you push me, because it lets me do what we do." He smiles. "I miss it, when I'm away. Is all." He goes back to unpacking. "That's what I'm trying to say."

"Me too," I say.

"You don't take vacations," he says as I stand, and laughs.

"That's why," I say. I look out of the window at the sun, slowly coming up between the raindrops. "You must be pretty tired."

"Yeah, you could say that."

Jetlagged, too. I lose myself staring over the grounds, and he laughs.

"If you think I'm missing the rounds tonight, you're nuts."

'

First things first: a conundrum. The Riddler, were he alive, would be proud – he has been reincarnated, backdated twenty years; black, skinny, and animated, someone has taken his name.

"I am the Riddler!" he screams at the news helicopter floating above him; he has kidnapped a few rich people at a daytime soiree, one a semi-friend, and is extorting them – he demands payment at the party. He gets it; I am intrigued.

Dick catches me watching the footage. "What a joke, right?"

I shrug. "He did get away."

"That's true." He pauses. "What do you think?"

I turn. "What do you think?"

He tries to read my mind. "…that the money isn't worth following, but we can't let someone like that set an example." I smile, and turn back to the TV. Good kid.

I look to him again. "You want this one?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "I should rest."

"Rest?"

"Well, you know," he says, "patrol downtown, look for little things. You know, take it easy tonight." I nod. Good kid.

'

"Who is he?"

"Who? The new Riddler?" My source, a scumbag who deals guns to kids, laughs in my face. I pull my fist back. "Wait wait wait…I'll give you his name - Roger Johnson. He's a joke."

"He a customer?"

"Nah man, he's from around the way. Thinks he's smart."

I smile. "Now Jamal, it's bad to rat on people from 'around the way.'" He gets my drift. "Didn't you know?"

"You tell anyone-"

"What," I say, and push my face into his. He folds his hand, and I pull it out. "Your business is done."

He laughs, and I reach my hand back; he winces and I punch the wall next to him, and he stops laughing. He looks at the dent.

"That's your face. Understand?"

Jamal stares at me. "After I sold the broken ones to Carver's gang? I helped you the fuck out, man!"

"You did the right thing," I say. "And don't say the kids are just going to get the guns from someone else."

"They are, though," he says, but pulls back like he's expecting a body shot. I start to walk away.

"You're done," I say. "I'll let you sell what you've got, and you're done."

"What do you want me to do, man, huh?"

"Open a restaurant," I say. "Your mom's a cook, right?" I shoot a grappling hook up into the sky, and smile.

'

He's smart, I'll give him that, but he's not a genius. The booby traps he set specifically for me aren't capable of taking a normal man down. But they are inventive.

Roger is surprised to find me in his hideout; so surprised he forgets to pull a gun. "How'd you get past the sensors?" he asks after I dispatch his friends. Like it's some kind of game.

I approach and he doesn't move. My foot kicks the floor in front of me and the trap door gives way. I sniff. "Spikes, right?" I ask. Now he's scared – he backs up into the desk, where he tries to grab something, or push a button or something, but in less than a second I am on him, knocking his air out and twisting his arm this close to breaking it. "I get it," I say. "Start your career by killing the Batman, huh? You little shit."

He laughs, and I break it.

'

He's still holding in tears when the squad car picks him up. "Hey Bats," he says as he is being led away. "You'll be seeing me again."

I walk towards him and his eyes get wide. He tries to escape the cop's grip – I nod to officer Sposki, and he does. He is mid-sprint as my hand gets to his shoulder; I throw him to the ground, on his bad arm. "Ah, FUCK!" he screams, as if anyone in the world will help him. I lay him one, thick, straight to the jaw; something tickles my knuckles. I hope he has insurance.

He sputters. I don't smile, although I want to. "Only my friends call me Bats." I pick him up by his collar, and hand him to Sposki. "And the Riddler's dead."

'

"Damn, you did a number on him, huh?" Dick is looking at the paper, where a bloody Roger Johnson is on the cover. "Did you teach him a lesson?"

"Probably just what to do better next time." I eat my eggs, across the kitchen table from my partner. "If he ever gets the chance." I chew the yolk. I hate these people.

"So are we going in disguises?" he asks about the funeral. I smile.

'

When the Batmobile shows up the party stops. It parks in the normal lot, but takes up two spaces. Robin and I step out to all eyes.

Italian suits fitted over the costumes for the occasion, we leave the capes and belts in the car. No one would be stupid enough. As the eulogy is paused we find a seat in the back. "Tetch," I say as I pass the Mad Hatter; he looks at me with death. He's been clean for a while, though, and today isn't the day.

I look further around and see mostly organized crime figures, all staring in my direction. It is a brash move to come in the first place, but late is another. "Sorry to cause a commotion," I say. "Please continue."

They're on a schedule, and so, even though whispers are thrown around and people leave, the priest starts up again.

The service is somber, but it is obvious that Edward had few real friends. This is more an event for the underworld than any real remembrance. I feel something, but let it pass.

After it ends we remain seated, to better watch those leaving, but they all look away, hands over faces. It was in bad taste to show up, but in some ways I feel as though I was the only one who truly came to pay respects. I stand up. Goodbye Eddy.

A man approaches me. "Here," he says, and hands me an envelope.

"What's this?"

"It was in the will," he says with disgust, and leaves.

'

"Aren't you going to test it?"

I shake it next to my ear as Robin drives. "It's not a bomb," I say.

"Well, obviously."

"And there's no powder."

Robin looks concerned as I move to open it. "Shouldn't you-"

I drop what's inside into my palm. It's a card, and I open it.

After a few seconds of my staring, Robin gets curious. "What is it?"

I pause. "I'm not sure."

"Oh, it's a riddle," he says.

"Right." Something about Hamlet, to sleep perchance to dream…something he would write. Something that probably didn't make sense even to him.

But there's another something there. I stare at the paper, and hold it up to a light. Robin's right, we're going to run tests.

'

I let the kid do the rounds and keep watch myself once he gets antsy. And five hours later, at 3:39 in the middle of the night, they come. The watchman must have let them in through the back.

The autopsy reports weren't available to me, but I bet if I had seen them the fingerprints of GCPD corruption would have been easy to spot. Because what was in the coffin wasn't the Riddler's body – it was his score.

I let them do the dirty work, and it takes them less time than I figured to dig up the coffin. They take the body out, put it in a plastic bag and rebury the empty casket, all in record time. These are pros, maybe the graveyard's undertakers themselves.

Which means it should be easy. To be fair, I think as I land on the grass, it would be hard for anyone to fight while carrying a bag full of corpse and bullion on their shoulders.

They don't know what to do at first, and don't drop the body right away. I give one a gut punch and he goes down; I trip the second so that he ends up under the falling body. The third pulls a gun and before he can level it batarangs give him scars he'll be talking about for the rest of his life.

I go for the easy confession once the situation is secure. "Where's your boss?"

"Like I'm gonna tell."

"You want it the hard way, huh?"

"Do your worst." I laugh.

"What?" he asks.

"I want you to tell your friends something."

He's scared. "…what?"

I reach my arm back, and my fist hits his face HARD - he spurts blood from his nose; I reach back again, and he passes out. I look up, blood all over my hand, and turn to the second man. He blanches, and, as I approach, spits out an address.

'

We're in a familiar situation. I am standing on a street corner, sirens in the distance, holding a tied-up perp in my hands. "Where'd you get the stunt double," I ask.

"Some kid. Gullible. Gave him free surgery." He stretches his neck. "You're not gonna tell me what the tip-off was, are you?"

"Want to tell me what the police will find in his stomach?"

He's silent. The sirens get closer.

"It was the note."

His head snaps up. "What did you say?"

"It was handwritten." He stares. "From a week before your 'death.'" He looks like he is beating himself mentally. "Other than that, flawless. You could have flown off on those tickets and no one would have been the wiser."

"…that's what I get for being sentimental." I smile. "Conflict diamonds," he says.

"How many?"

"A lot." The sirens become flashing lights as they turn onto the street, and we both know the conversation is going to end very soon.

"Did you miss me, Bats?"

I stare at him, and say nothing. The cops come ever closer, and I drop him. He's too smart to run. "Have fun in Arkham, Eddy."

I fly into the sky. Robin will be wondering where I am, and there is a city of need. And Mr. Nygma is right, being sentimental is deadly around here, in our game. But still I sit in the shadows and watch; watch as they question him, watch as they put him in the car, and watch as they drive him away.


End file.
